Most people would never guess in a million years that there are scars stretching across my chest with no nipples.
I've just been struck by a thought...or
rather a string of them. This happens sometimes when 'm beading. As
my hands piece things together my head begins to do the same. The
parallels are fascinating, really. Sometimes the pattern doesn't work
out so I have to undo my work, re-plan, re-arrange, and re-string. I
suppose life can be like beading necklaces.
My mom came out of surgery doing quite
well. Since she does not have to suffer chemotherapy or radiation,
she was able to get breast implants at the same time as the
mastectomy. That gave me comfort. It doesn't completely erase the
horror but it softens the blow quite a bit.
It was in May of 2012 that I was
diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. For the past two and a half
years, breast cancer has been the major defining factor of my life.
I've been a new mother fighting breast cancer, I've been a wife
fighting breast cancer, I've been a single mom fighting breast
cancer. I've been an artist, a writer, a student, a destitute
daughter and friend...it's all been tangled up in cancer. Having done
this dance twice, I already knew that its mark was permanent.
You don't just “get cancer” and
then leave it at the side of the road abandoned or sitting by itself
in a restaurant wondering what happened. Once it grips you it is a
part of you forever. However, that leaves me to wonder at what point
it will stop being one of the first things that is used to describe
me, like having my hair dyed purple or learning Krav Maga. When I
take off my bra I see breasts with no nipples and scars screaming
across them. Cancer's mark is there in the mirror every day. It is
inside my voice when I say hello to someone, when I do my dishes,
when I pay my cell phone bill. I make jewelry for the cause, I am
writing a book. I have been shut away from the “real world” for
so long that social situations normal to most have become strange and
alien to me.
Looking back at my brother's death, I
see how losing George is a permanent part of me but not the defining
circumstance hovering over every day like it once was. I will always
be a grieving sister I suppose, but I don't start each day with “my
brother died” anymore. Will cancer be the same way? When it is no
longer one of the first things to talk about what will I have to say?
I've been walking this dreamscape for so long, I'm not so sure I will
ever be fully returned to “reality.” Maybe that's okay though.
But at some point...I'll need to find something else to talk about.
Some days I feel like I can face
anything. Even on the more difficult days, I know that whatever is
going on, whatever monsters are breathing down my neck, nothing will
stop me. Even if they slow me down or knock me over, I will get back
up because that's what I do. I get up. I deal with it.
My mom has breast cancer. I haven't
talked about it much because, well, I can't deal with it. Tomorrow
she goes in to have both breasts removed and I can't deal with it.
She won't have to do chemo or radiation like I did...but I'm still
not dealing with it. I can't. I don't know how.
When I was pregnant with my daughter
and my husband crawled into a bottle, my mom swooped in and gave me
support. We had been distant from each other for a very long time,
but in an instant, the gap was closed. I largely had to go through my
pregnancy alone, but I had my mother back. Then as breast cancer came
for me a few months later, there she was again. The mom I was always
at odds with or felt misunderstood by became my rock. She became my
connection to survival and sanity. She put herself in financial and
marital strain to help me through. She has been supportive in my
divorce and my decision to do Krav Maga because she wants me to be
happy and she wants to see me thrive.
I can't deal with this. I just can't
deal with this. It hurts too much. It scares me too much. And there's
this crazy, irrational part of my brain that wonders if the strain of
helping me through my cancer somehow lead to her cancer. It's not
uncommon to hear of a woman getting breast cancer years after it
happened to her mother but this...this is weird. This is unsettling
and I just can't process it. There is nothing I can do for her and
there is no way I can be there at the hospital so far away to wait in
agony while she undergoes the same painful surgery I had to endure.
Maybe if I was there, maybe if I could hold her hand, I could process
it. Maybe I could smile at her the way she smiles at me and tell her
that it's alright because I've been there and I know. But here I am,
in the dark, all alone, knowing that tomorrow my mother will be
butchered and there is nothing I can do.
Some things as it turns out, are beyond
my ability to deal with.
I know it's been a while since my last
post. Things have been a whirlwind and I'm just now figuring out my
new pattern, my new way of progressing. I have returned to the Reike
Path and have recently been attuned to Elemental Reike. It is doing
wonderful things for me. My new love however, my new love has taken
the fighter I am inside, and is extracting it to my exterior, piece
by piece. It is making me feel more whole and alive than I have ever
been.
Shortly after my reconstruction began,
when I was still living with the crippling pain of tissue expanders
in my chest, slowly stretching my burnt and scarred skin, I was sent
to a physical therapist. I had lost most of the ability to lift or
reach with my left arm, due to the removal of my lymph nodes, and the
decimation of my chest muscle by radiation as well as the re-routing
of a portion of my latissimus muscle from my back to the front. In
short: the brutality of treatments lead to an equally brutal and
shockingly horrific beginning to the journey of making me as
physically whole as possible. There was so much pain...and so many
limitations to how I could function.
My physical therapist was a
delightfully boisterous woman named Joyce. Joyce was wonderful! She
loved dogs, she was a master at her profession, she had a warm
spirit, and I could talk to her. I can't remember how many sessions
we had, but it was cut short by my insurance refusing to cover all
that she had planned for me. At the beginning of one of our sessions,
I noticed that she had bruises on her forearms. I wasn't going to ask
but she said “Before you ask...” and told me about how she was in
her Krav Maga class and somebody had a weapon and she didn't. It was
her job to take said weapon from the other person...and that was her
explanation for the bruises. I could feel my eyes widen with
interest. She filled me in a little bit on the wonderful world of
Krav Maga and I had her write it down for me so I could look it up.
I never did.
The sessions ended and the piece of
paper wound up in my purse. I would find it occasionally and put it
back. Tissue expansion continued for a while. Thankfully Joyce had
helped me enough so that I wasn't in constant pain. Mornings were
still rough but I had stretches to help. Once I was expanded to the
size I wanted, it was time for permanent implants and...well...if you
read back there are entries about some of the following surgeries.
Surgeries continued (and are almost
finished), my marriage fell apart, I damn near went homeless...a few
times, I won my disability case, and I began to focus on my jewelry
business and getting better emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
I started going for walks, and then I started riding my bike six
miles a day. Finally, my life was becoming something good. Finally, I
was finding happiness.
Shortly after I won my settlement for
the two years of disability I was initially denied, despite meeting
the full qualifications...you know, having breast cancer and all...of
being disabled. I could now pay off a few bills, pay rent, take care
of my car...and take some good friends out for a well-deserved meal.
Amber and Nasir, who have taken me out
numerous times for dinner, picked me and Violet up and before we
found our destination, we happened by a little plaza-strip mall-thing
that I go by several times a week. I think I knew there was a Martial
Arts school there, but hadn't really thought much about it (other
than once in a while musing about what form of martial arts would be
good for me if I ever had the guts to pursue it). However, on this
particular passing, a sign...no literally, a sign caught my
attention. It's big red letters spelled “KRAV MAGA.”
I thought about Joyce. I thought about
how I've been poisoned, butchered, and burned. I thought about my
brother's death, the heart-wrenching end to my marriage, and how I'm
still here. I'm still standing. I'm shaking, but I'm standing. I
thought about the countless times I've been called a “warrior”
through all of this, and I realized that it was time to really become
one.
The very next day, I went into East
West Martial Arts and signed up for an introductory
“see-how-you-like-it” class. $25 and a free shirt! How could I
pass that up? I left my name to be called back for an appointment and
as events unfolded, I found myself in my first class on a Friday
afternoon, nervous as Hell, but bubbling with excitement. I was taken
to a small room with mirrors where I was given a brief one-on-one
introduction, then I was lead out into a much larger room with
mirrors...and there were other people there. I was surrounded by
strangers in a well-lit room, feeling out of my element, wondering if
I'd made a mistake but refusing to go back. I hate being “the new
kid” but new I was, and already on a journey of re-birth, as it
were. I had no idea what to expect so in that wide-eyed and terrified
kind of way, I listened for instruction and followed as best I could
with a little extra help. We started by jogging in circles...and I
tripped over a raised part of the floor mat, falling on my ass.
Great. Awesome. Get up. Keep going. You're here. Do this. I ran in
circles, I did push-ups...sort of, I did sit-ups, I learned how to
punch, how to kick. It was exhausting, but I was unfolding. I was
filling up with vitality and life. I was hungry for more. By the end
of my first class I knew I had found my new love, Krav Maga. I signed
up for the nine month program. THIS would be my rehabilitation. THIS
would be the physical therapy I need.
It's only been about a month, but
everything has changed. I am already stronger, more confident, and
happier. I am SO happy!!! I have even officially gone off
antidepressants with my doctor's full approval because this...THIS
fills a void. Even when it hurts, it brings me such joy, such
fulfillment, such purpose! I don't ever want to quit. I want to see
this thing through. I want to get good at it. I want to become what
people tell me I am. I want to be a warrior. For me it is not enough
to survive. I want to thrive. I want to fly.
I will learn. I will grow. I will
fight. I will fly.
But the triggers. The triggers are daily. I really outdid
myself on dinner tonight: chicken strips, jo-jo’s, battered mushrooms and onion
rings…and it. Was. Amazing. I’m still pondering 4ths.
Violet would have none of it. She wanted cereal or chips, or
whatever was inside the cupboard she was pointing at while screaming until I
wondered if my ears could actually bleed from prolonged exposure to this
otherworldly screeching. Really the sheer emotional violence of her protest was
quite something to behold. Now, mind you, I had another one of my
reconstructive surgeries only 9 days ago…one of the liposuction/fat-injection
deals. Have I mentioned how excruciating liposuction is? Well it is and the
recovery time is a bitch. It takes forever, it leaves nerve-damage, and don’t
even get me started on the bruising.
So the protest became escalated to the point of having to
take her into her room, lie down with her in her bed and attempt to hold her
while she screamed it out. Now, I know she wasn’t starving. She was just being picky.
But let me tell you…holding a raging child screaming “I hungry, I HUNGRY” while
you are struggling not to allow further damage to your post-surgical
person…might just pull a trigger.
Have you ever been so hungry that you cried? I’m not talking
low-blood sugar or being out of the good stuff until food stamps come in a
week. I’m talking continuous barely eating so as not to run completely out
until your ribs show, your period stops and you are so exhausted from being
hungry all the time that some days you open the cupboard and weep. Yeah. That’s
hunger. I’ve cried over many things in my life. Some were really worthy of
tears, some were futile and wasted, but there is nothing so bitter as crying because
you’re hungry. That my friends, for me, is the bottom of the barrel. That is
the ultimate in humiliation and despair.
Thankfully since I’ve been a single mom, those tears have
not return. Let me be clear that I am NOT blaming my ex-husband for any of that
part. I’m choosing to chalk it up as just how the dice landed. For whatever
reason, it has turned out the way it has and I have not shed a tear of
starvation in quite some time. There have been plenty of other tears, of
course. In early July, I even broke. Yes, I broke. But it wasn’t hunger that
broke me and I have since rebuilt myself. As my daughter kicked and screamed
tonight because she was “hungry”. A trigger was pulled. And so in turn I am
choosing to pull that trigger AWAY. Away from me, away from my child. As long
as I have any power over her wellbeing she will never cry from genuine hunger
and I will never allow myself to starve to that point of sad desperation again.
Ever.
Divorce sucks even when you are glad to be out of the
relationship. I think there’s a period in which we lie to ourselves to ease the
transition. My marriage certainly wasn't full of comfort and togetherness…at
least not the last few years of it. I grew cold toward him and he did the same.
However, even when you are miserable you have the illusion of comfort. When
something difficult or painful was happening other than the marriage itself,
there was still usually a shoulder or warm arms to wrap myself up in and
pretend that there was comfort…pretend that everything would be okay. Now when
everything is not okay, there is no masking it with hugs. There is no illusion
of protection from the partner who really isn't my partner. The harshness of
everything is right there and I have to deal with it.
To ease the trauma, we might tell ourselves that significant
others are more trouble than they are worth and that we really don’t want to
deal with that shit anymore. It’s true that I don’t NEED a man and to have one
too soon would be damaging and confusing. To say I don’t want one though isn't
entirely true. I’m not looking to be taken care of. I’m too prideful for that.
Sex is fun and I do miss a good go-round, but that’s not it either. To have
someone play with my hair, to hold me when tragedy shakes my world, to have
those conversations that we only have with a partner while cooking dinner,
having coffee in the morning with messy hair and bad breath, or maybe while
cuddling on the sofa…that’s what I miss and it was missing from my marriage for
a long time. I miss emotional intimacy. I miss knowing that there was someone
to talk to without pulling anyone away from their world because that person was
part of MY world.
I don’t need a man. I don’t need a relationship and right
now that would be bad for me. But I’d be lying if I said that sometimes I don’t
want one…just to ease the sting. This is a rite of passage, I suppose. I’ve
always been independent and content to spend time alone. But sometimes when
alone is the only option…alone can turn to lonely. Maybe when Violet is old
enough to discuss her day in more detail it won’t be so bad. Maybe as time
continues to pass I won’t want to be with anyone other than her at all. But one
day, she’ll move on to live her own life which is what I want for her.
Don’t get me wrong, I love being able to call the shots at
home. I like having MY territory. As the ghost of my marriage still haunts me,
I am rebelling against what was by becoming what I want to be. I am stirring up
the what-is to create the what-will-be. One day maybe I’ll have someone to
share that with. Right now what I really want is to be happy alone. I don’t
need anyone but I don’t want to want anyone either.
The apartment complex has been repaving the parking lot.
Today as I stood in the middle of it under the afternoon sun, what is usually
filled with cars and residents moving about, was more like a desolate ghost
town. The pavement was new and smooth, waiting for the lines to be painted.
Ready but not ready. Renewed but unfinished. Maybe I just need to remember that
it’s only going to feel like this until my lines are painted.
A few of my friends have warned me about how divorce messes
you up mentally and emotionally for a while, but wow. I was not prepared for
this. I think what makes it so painful and confusing for me is that I was
already in the process of trying to find the real world again…trying to get
back to life. I was still in a semi-state of limbo and then BAM! And
unfortunately, the whole thing has gotten a lot uglier than I could have
foreseen (no I shan’t be sharing details. You’ll have to wait for my book).
So here I am, trying to figure out how to support myself
financially while caring for my daughter, dealing with the lingering
side-effects of cancer treatment, continuing surgeries (oh we’re not done yet
folks), waiting on back-disability pay for the duration of my treatment,
licking my emotional wounds from my little family being unceremoniously torn
apart, trying to shake my inner artist awake, and the list goes on…
I know, I know. It’s kind of whiny isn’t it? At least I feel
like it is at the moment. I’m not sure if it’s been made obvious yet, but I can
be extremely prideful. Too often I expect myself to be able to stand tall, wielding
my claymore fearlessly when inside I’m a crumpled, insecure heap, soggy with my
own tears. Why do I insist on hiding this? I’m going through an unbelievably
massive load of tumultuous events! It’s okay to fall apart, sometimes! It’s
normal! It’s HEALTHY! Perhaps I’m fearful of becoming that whiny “poor me”
person who nauseates people. I’ve been her before and it wasn’t pretty. Maybe
fearful isn’t the right word. I think TERRIFIED is a better one. I’m already
feeling awkward in my interactions with some people. I’m questioning and
second-guessing virtually everything I do and say. I’m so afraid that I’m
losing myself, but the really strange part is…my closest friends have recently
told me (just yesterday, in fact) that it’s good to see me BEING myself again!
Really they aren’t wrong. I’ve had quite a few days of feeling my true self
scratching through the cobwebs and coming back to the surface. She’s definitely
a better version...Rissa 2.0, if you will. I guess now that I see her…err, ME
coming home, it’s that much more frightening to think of losing myself again.
I’ve never done the “one foot in front of the other” thing
very well and maybe that’s something I should practice more. I have always
tended to lose patience with myself rather quickly. I want to be stable NOW. I
want to be healed NOW. I want to move forward NOW. But it doesn’t work that
way. Somewhere between cancer and divorce the whole world went crazy and it’s
not something you can just hack through with a sword. This jungle, these
thorns, must be carefully navigated one piece at a time. There are treasures to
be discovered and recovered. To rush through this is to miss them and risk
going in circles, ending up right back in the same dark place.
Perhaps I should follow the advice I gave to a friend.
Always remember to look at the sky in all its beautiful forms…and breathe.
Oh god, how this song makes me cry...but it's so true. I think we all just want to be good.
I never really picked a favorite out of Maya’s works. I
never read one of her books cover to cover. I guess I never really needed to.
She was always there. It seems that every time I turned a corner, a page,
scrolled down a newsfeed or heard an empowering lecture, she was in there. Her
words all-encompassing stretched out to all corners of the Earth it seems, and
now that she has stretched free, those words continue the work she came here to
do.
No, I couldn’t with confidence say what my favorite piece
is. Sometimes we don’t know to hold onto these things or seek them out because
the person who shared them was simply a part of the fabric of the world around
us just as the sky, the wind, the rain. Do you have a favorite rainstorm? Is
there a particular leaf on your favorite tree that captivates you? Maybe there
is but for me, the tree is there and I can cool myself in its shade. Maya is
there. Her words are there. She is the molecules floating around us and her
words are part of the language we speak.
The lessons have been hard, as of late. For the first time
since beginning this blog, I actually deleted a post. I think it was last week
or something. I was just becoming way too morose for myself to handle. I
suppose occasional crippling melancholy is expected when facing my current
situations. Some of them I shall not divulge…at least not until I write my
book.
One of the most recent lessons that I’m still finding myself
in the thick of, is how destructive the sharing of sensitive information can be
and it’s not as simple as “don’t gossip.” I mean…that’s pretty basic even though
most of us slip and do it from time to time. The trickier situations usually
involve a person who “means well” by meddling in ways that cause more harm than
good. They aren't trying to hurt anyone, they just aren’t taking the
possibility of collateral damage into account. Then there are the self-loathing
people who thrive on stirring the pot, either because they crave the drama or
they have a personal vendetta against someone. Either way, focusing their
efforts on other people’s faults and weaknesses takes their minds off their
own.
Suppose you heard something you clearly weren't meant to
about someone you know and it upsets you. As a loyal person your first instinct
is to run and tell the person who was being spoken about so they can hear the
dreadful things that are being said. But before you do that, do you ask
yourself questions like:
Does this information need to be shared in order to keep
this person safe?
Is this information just hurtful words and will sharing it
actually change anything?
Was the person saying it as a way to vent because they are
in distress and in need of someone to confide in or are they purposely spreading
rumors?
Most importantly…how much pain is it going to cause the
person you intend to tell and do they really need to know in order to continue
with their day?
Having been on all sides of the above questions, here is
what I have learned from experience:
So, I’ve messed up and shared things that were said about a
person TO that person that only resulted in hurting them because really…it was
not vital that they knew. It was just mean or hurtful information.
Congratulations, Larissa! You just ruined someone’s day! Yes, I felt the
appropriate guilt.
I have also been in the situation where I had said something
that I found out got back to the person I was talking about and oh…what pain
and misery it caused! Sometimes I need to vent. We all do. Most of the time
there is no action or intent behind my angry or sad words. It’s just a way to
blow off steam or release a little hurt of my own. Sometimes, I am worried
about a person and I need to confide in someone to talk me through it. In both
these situations, the person delivering the news wasn't doing a damn thing to
help. Whether it was intentional or by accident, they were only serving to
wound the person I was speaking about and it caused nothing but pain all
around.
The next time we hear something that is clearly not meant
for us, we need to ask ourselves the above questions. And then we need to take
one more thing into consideration: when information is shared by anyone other
than the original speaker, it almost always gets distorted even just a little
bit. And again, whether it’s done on purpose or purely by accident, the message
being received can often have entirely different meaning than the one being
sent. Remember playing that game Telephone when we were kids? It’s like that
only instead of “purple monkey dishwasher”, the result is usually a lot less
amusing. Is it really worth it?
A few months ago
something remarkable happened. I don’t remember what I was doing or where I was
going that day. I just remember that when I looked in the mirror, for the first
time in my life, the ugly girl was gone. Now I had outgrown the ugly duckling
phase many years ago and I knew it. In my adult life I’ve had a lot of days when
I looked at my reflection and saw a pretty face but I could always see where
the ugly girl had been and where she might still hide beneath the surface. This
was different. She had completely vanished and I didn’t even notice her
leaving. She didn’t make a scene, didn’t leave a note…it was as if she had
never existed at all. What’s even better is that she hasn’t returned since. I
don’t see her anymore, not even in the morning when my hair is a mess and I
have no makeup on. When I look at myself I see a genuinely pretty woman. Sure I
have what some would call flaws. The dark circles under my eyes, my crooked
ear, and funny nose still exist and they aren’t going away. I don’t mind them
though. They add to my unique appearance. Maybe they even add to what makes me
pretty though I can’t say for sure.
Is it because I
have been working so hard on my self-esteem? Is it my new boobs and flatter
stomach? Is it because I’m a mother now? Mothers carry a special kind of beauty
after all and people do frequently tell me how much my daughter resembles me.
She is absolutely gorgeous! Perhaps all the compliments I receive regularly
finally sank in. Maybe it’s all of the above. The important thing is that it
happened. I escaped the clutches of the ugly girl and I didn’t even have to
watch her finally slip away as an unwanted afterthought. I certainly remember
her. I remember what it was like to be her and I definitely understand what Janice
Ian was talking about, what Tori Amos shared, and even Christina Aguilara’s
words have a special place in my heart.
While I’m glad
she’s gone, I also don’t want to seem ungrateful. She taught me a lot of
things. She is probably a big part of why I’m a nice person, a compassionate
person, an imaginative person. I vividly remember sitting on the flimsy old
swing set in the backyard of the house where George was born. I don’t think I
had passed 2nd grade yet. I sat there under a grey sky feeling awkward
and ugly, wishing that I would one day grow up to be beautiful. Obviously it
had greater importance to me then than it does now. I learned a long time ago
that the most important beauty radiates from within and that the outside is
just a casing. I guess that’s why I found it to be such a pleasant surprise
when I saw that pretty woman in the mirror. I hope with all my heart that I can
show Violet that she’s beautiful inside and out. I hope she always walks with a
generous heart and her head held high.
This was a long time ago...before my brother died, before I became a mother, before breast cancer. How I wanted to be strong enough to lift that sword...
As
much as I hate to admit it, I still occasionally have my whiny “poor me” days.
Today is definitely one of them. Sometimes it’s so hard not to just scream and
smash things and rant about how unfair it is that after all the shit I’ve been
through…I’m still struggling. I’m still scrounging and scraping and clawing to
survive and now I’m doing it without a partner. Part of me wants to bust into
the office of the CEO in charge of life and the world and demand a reasonable
accommodation. Hell, how about a big fat pay raise? I’ve battled, bled, grieved
and at times I’ve even starved. Let me tell you; there are no tears that flow
more bitterly than the ones brought by hunger. Well, at least not in my
experience. Hm. I’m not sure I’ve ever shared that before. There is something
about going hungry that has some sort of shame attached to it.
I
am not sharing this to elicit sympathy. I am sharing it because I’m hoping that
by admitting to it, I can rid myself of the self-pity and guilt that comes with
it. I don’t feel it every day but sometimes I’m just not strong enough to keep
it at bay. I suppose this is okay. I mean it makes me human right? It makes me
stop and talk myself down or write a blog. It makes me want to go back in time
and pick up that enormous claymore and scream my way into the fray with primal blood-lust and the sort of madness a person sometimes needs to stay alive. Only
now there is no field of battered bodies. There is no claymore. However there
is that mad lust for survival. There is that mad desire to violently tear down
the walls of this unsavory reality and stand atop its rubble bleeding, scarred,
and triumphant.
So
I guess tonight as I am feeling alone and lost while my daughter is at her
father’s house, I can at least be glad that there is a plate of warm and
delicious food waiting to fill my belly. As I fight of the self-beating that
threatens over doing something incredibly stupid earlier today, I will use the
things I’ve done right to guide me through this darkness. I will hold onto the
knowledge that Violet will be coming home on Friday and I can hold and kiss her
until my heart bursts with blissful love. It’s her. She gives me strength and I
won’t stop until I am every last bit the mother she needs and deserves. I won’t
stop. Ever. It’s a lonely road right now and I am tired, so very tired but I am
also stronger and more determined. I will not let this win.
After a year of courtship, a legal union dressed as
pirates, and 8 tumultuous years…my marriage is ending. The thing that was never
going to happen to me is happening. It was my call, but that doesn’t make it
painless. It doesn’t mean I don’t love him, either. It just means that living
conditions became unbearable for me and I had to make a change.
My husband is a wonderful person…and an alcoholic.
He gave me permission to share that. It’s been a very tough battle for him and
I hope he wins that fight. I really hope he does. He is renting a room in a dry
household with wonderful people whom I trust so Violet gets to spend half the
week there. A few people have stated that they didn’t want us to split up and
that with enough love it can be worked out. What they don’t understand is that
this isn’t about love or lack thereof. It’s about a partnership that crumbled
years ago. It’s about a promise I made.
When things got really bad between us while I was
going through cancer treatment, he reached the point where he was hiding
whiskey bottles under the bathroom sink and I found out. I haven’t always been
the perfect example and I have enabled him during times when I just didn’t have
the strength to fight against it but I have also shown him compassion in this
disease. As long as he was honest with me about it and didn’t hide it, we could
work through it. When he’d come home drunk and worried that I would hate him I
would say that I was frightened, hurt and sad but that we would start again
tomorrow…and then we’d start again. What I made clear however, was that if he
started hiding bottles again it would be the end of us because I can’t help him
fight what he keeps hidden.
So I ended it.
I’ve been living in a constantly moving storm so
long, I can’t remember what life was like before the chaos, before the
seemingly endless tragedies and battles. I think the biggest changes began with
the death of my brother almost 4 years ago. Since that universe-altering event,
it’s been almost unending. I was bullied by my boss to the point where I had to
leave my job and take on full-time student status. The following spring, I
discovered that I was pregnant. That’s when my husband first lost himself in a
bottle and I lost my ability to trust. When my beautiful daughter came into the
world things started to get better between us for a time. We even went to AA
meetings as a little family with baby Violet in tow. We were making good
friends and he was making progress. Then the next spring, for the second time
in my life, Cancer announced that it had come for me. It didn’t take my life
but it took my breasts, my ovaries…and my fear. The most important
metamorphosis of my life began at that point. While I embraced the gifts cancer
had to offer and began to become more whole than I’ve been in my life, he
started to crumble. A baby and a wife with cancer had to be a mind-boggling
Hell for him. It was an on-and-off the wagon sort of ride while I did what I
could to keep things together on my end. I didn’t always do a very good job but
in times like these…who does?
And then, about a week before my birthday I found a
bottle of vodka behind the bathroom garbage can. It was full and unopened, but
behind it was an empty one. My blood went cold and I began to shake. I knew
that this was the end.
So I broke his heart…and mine too. The family broke,
our way of life broke. Everything just seemed to shatter all around. The storm
that had been nipping at our heels for so many years finally hit and everything
changed.
Of course it still hurts. It hasn’t even been a
month yet. I wanted to keep the whole thing quiet until it was done and the
divorce was final but in his hurt, he let the cat out of the bag and questions
began to fly out at us both. So I made an official announcement and now
everyone knows. As this continues, I am becoming more and more certain that
this is the right thing. Even though I feel ripped apart, I also feel relief.
Even though I am almost completely without income and I’m scared, I have a new
sense of confidence and I am opening up to my potential. The wounds are all so
fresh but I accept these scars in my collection and I know that we can still be
good parents and even friends. It feels like my days are all about sweeping up
metaphorical shards of glass but it is needed in order to find that clean,
shiny surface. Healing often comes with pain and this healing is a tremendous undertaking.
Somewhere in the last month, I remember telling my
therapist that I have never had a self-esteem so healthy before and that for
the first time in my life, when I look in the mirror the ugly girl who always
lurked within was nowhere to be seen. She’s still gone and with the down of the
Ugly Duckling finally being shed completely, I can see the beginning growth
stages of my swan feathers.
No. These are not swan feathers. They are fire and I
am rising like the Phoenix…I hope he will do the same. He's a good dad, an amazing artist, and can run one hell of a D&D campaign. He deserves to give himself happiness. I want to see him happy and being together made us both miserable.
